Archive for July 6th, 2008

Bush has made accountability a major theme for this year's G8 meetings, arguing that "we need people who not only make promises, but write checks, for the sake of human rights and human dignity, and for the sake of peace." The G8 includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.

G8 leaders are expected to address an array of political, security and economic issues when they meet for three days. "We expect that they will discuss a broad range of issues, including development, Africa, food security, trade and investment policy, energy security, climate change and issues relating to the global economy, including oil prices.

Obviously, we expect the very same people who became insanely rich thanks to these "issues" 1 to clean up their profitable mess and save the world.

We expect politicians whose career and position is entirely built upon terror to fight it.
We expect governments driven by ruthless corporate interests to regulate for a planet-sustainable economy, which may require profit margin reductions or even degrowth2.
We expect oil companies, mercenary armies, reconstruction contractors and weapon manufacturers, which rather than bribing the elected people representatives like they used to do in the past, nowadays have their executives directly placed in key government roles as an obscene parody of democracy, to shoot themselves in their feet.

[2] The linked article is the first Google Search result in English for "Degrowth", and likely a good introductory resource. While both Italian and French Wikipedia sites have articles about this topic, I could not find anything on the English site. Why?